Bluetorch Ride-N-Slide Series
By Erick Hilton

A slider awaits a player

Confused and disgruntle from last weekends final Tour stop where neither Parks Bonifay nor Darin Shapiro made it through the qualifying rounds, Parks needed to prove to himself that he is the best Wakeboarder of 2000. Parks and Shapiro were only separated by a few points for the Tour Championship when they went to Vancouver for the final round expecting to go board- to -board to decide the Tour Championship. When neither Shapiro nor Parks made it to the point rounds there, they were unable to go head -to -head like expected Shapiro walked away with Championship. Parks made the Ride-N-Slide event his own final show down. Parks was coming off his best competition at the Gravity Games three weeks ago (were he earned the Gold Medal). He left the final Tour stop in second. Parks made sure those watching new he was the man of the year and that winning the Gold at the Gravity Games are his only style known.

The Bluetorch, Right Guard Extreme Sport Ride-N-Slide event was unique as it positioned two sliders, a ramp hit and two double-up waves for the athletes to score points and divulge their best "Big Air" maneuver to the crowd watching from the shoreline. Just opposite the shoreline, up the hill were bleachers placed in front of the Freestyle Motocross course for spectators to view free. With a purse as much as $30,000 on the line, the athletes could not of performed better in quest for the $6,000 first place prize money. After the qualifying rounds on Thursday, Parks held the top spot over Shapiro, going into the finals.

Parks dazzled everyone with crazy moves on the slider, fun box and double up portions of the course. He pulled a gnarly boardslide on the fun box, going switch to a front side 360 off the box. And on the slider, Parks could run it in both directions, front side and backside, finishing with a twist of some sort. Parks was grateful for the $6,000 first place prize. "It's been a great summer"! Shapiro was content with his second overall finish. He was happy for Parks and he had his glory last weekend. The two of them have been dominating the Wakeboard Tour all season long. Finishing third was an enthusiastic Matt Staker for picking up his biggest paycheck ever. He was pumped on the event and looks forward to taking more purse money.